I am writing regarding Alliance for Quality Broadband Maine’s campaign, which was recently waged in my town.

On June 17, a new Facebook feed, “Broadband For Maine – Protect Southport,” popped up. The title caught my attention. After reading the content, I questioned their involvement in my island’s community fiber optic broadband vote, and I was censored. My cousin (one of our town’s librarians) witnessed this and we started monitoring their page.

Southport’s mailboxes were inundated with Alliance for Quality Broadband Maine flyers, and we learned who was behind the curtain only after the June 28 vote to reject the project, in the investigative reporting by Maine Public Radio’s Steve Mistler.

His July 7 story, “Charter-funded group campaigns against Maine municipal broadband, riling residents and ‘partners,’ ” revealed that Charter Communications (Spectrum’s corporate parent) financially contributed and that their efforts were executed by an in-state consulting firm, Resurgam Group.

On July 12, the online podcast Techdirt ran a story headlined “Charter’s Running a Fake Consumer Group in Maine That’s Killing Community Broadband – With the Help of A Democratic Advisor.”

Techdirt’s Karl Bode reported, “It’s not that hard for a monopoly to spend a few hundred thousand to scuttle such a vote. That’s great for them, as it saves them millions in potential competitive headaches, but it can often wind up hurting the taxpayers these bogus groups pretend to be so breathlessly concerned about.”

If an established West Coast internet watchdog is raising questions publicly about efforts to derail Maine’s rural broadband projects, shouldn’t we be doing the same?

Sarah Sherman
Southport Island

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